


Revel with the Poison Water

by Anonymous_Ostrich



Series: Siren AU [2]
Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nagisa's POV, Other, coping with loss, siren au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 13:29:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3210872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymous_Ostrich/pseuds/Anonymous_Ostrich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nagisa and Rei talk about the loss of their friend.</p><p>One-off of "<em>Erotomania</em>", taking place a few months after the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revel with the Poison Water

I'm no good at skipping rocks. I think I once heard someone say "it's all in the wrist", but I'm not sure. Everyone has different wrists. Mine must not be built for rock skipping.

It's chillier by the sea than in the city, and I pull my coat a little tighter around my body. I can no longer feel my cheeks or my nose, but I don't feel like leaving yet. I'm not exactly waiting for anything to happen, I simply can't convince myself to get up. Every time I think of heading home, my brain disconnects and my limbs refuse to move. I hug my knees to my chest, my breath coming out in round puffs of cold.

I don't think Mako-chan will come back. That's not why I'm here. I'm not sure what purpose coming down here from time to time serves me, but I'm compelled to do it whenever I catch myself thinking about everything that happened. Feeling around in the dirt blindly, I grab hold of another rock and throw it into the water, trying a different angle. It doesn't skip even a little, sinking like it's namesake, and I sigh. Whoever said it was all in the wrist wasn't being very specific.

"Nagisa-kun!"

A far-off voice startles me, and I spring up and look around. Not many people would bother coming around this side of the coast this time of year, and more importantly, I hadn't mentioned to anyone where I was.

I catch sight of a familiar dark-haired, bespectacled person coming my way from the direction of the trail behind me. Rei-chan's sudden and unexpected appearance makes my heart leap to my throat, and for some reason or another I almost feel like crying. I'm glad to see him, honestly.

"Rei-chan?" As Rei-chan nears me, he takes a moment to breathe, his cheeks flushed from the cold and from presumably jogging here. "What are you doing here?"

Rei-chan takes another gasp for air, letting it out slowly. His composure returns to him quickly. I'm envious of his stamina, but then again, I'm not on the track team.

When he looks at me, there's so much relief etched in his face I almost think something horrible happened, but the expression was fleeting and Rei-chan smiles nervously. "Just passing by…" He says in a horribly unconvincing tone. "I thought I saw you over here, so I…"

"You _thought_ you _saw_ me?" I ask him, not attempting to cover my suspicion. "In the middle of winter, out by the coast?"

Rei-chan reddened. "Well… I was out for a run, and…" The look I'm leveling his must have shattered his resolve, because he relents with a pitiful sigh, his shoulders sagging. "I _may_ have followed you, just a little… I apologize..."

"Followed me?" I'm not offended, I'm just confused. Rei-chan isn't the snooping type. "How come?"

Averting his gaze to the sea, Rei-chan adjusts his glasses distractedly. "You… Nagisa-kun, you didn't answer any of my texts, and although I should have just assumed you were busy, I suppose I was worried."

"Texts?" I pull my phone out of my pocket, and guilt immediately crushes me. I don't know how I didn't notice. It's not unusual for me to zone out, but not usually to the point of not being able to feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. "Ahh, sorry, Rei-chan… Still, why did you text me if you knew where I was already?"

Rei-chan clears his throat, looking distinctly embarrassed. "Well… In all honesty, Nagisa-kun, I knew how frequently you came down here, so when you didn't reply I just thought… Maybe…" He sighs again, fidgeting. "I'm sorry."

He looks so pathetic I can't possibly be angry with him. I offer him a reassuring smile. "It's fine, Rei-chan, but how did you even know…? Have you followed me here before?"

"Yes," Rei-chan seems a bit more relaxed now that I've more-or-less accepted his vaguely stalker-esque behavior. "You started disappearing in the evenings, so I couldn't help but be worried. You have every right to your privacy, and what you do is no business of mine unless you want it to be, but…" He sullenly looks away. "After what happened with Makoto-sempai…" His lips press firmly together and he stops there.

My mouth falls open as I put the pieces together. I feel stupid and guilty all at once. Mako-chan had done the same thing, hadn't he? Before he disappeared, he'd started to get secretive, and he was going off on his own all the time. So soon after losing Mako-chan, seeing me mirror his behavior must have been terrifying.

"You even said… You told me you had a dream about hearing a haunting melody, just like Makoto-sempai…" Rei-chan faces the ground, and I think I see his shoulders twitch. Seeing him so emotional drives nails into my heart. "I just…"

"Rei-chan, I'm _so_ sorry!" I grab the sleeve of his coat, looking up imploringly into his face. "I didn't realize! I wasn't trying to be all secretive about it, and I really didn't mean to worry you!"

Rei-chan gives me a soft smile, though he still looks vaguely teary. "Don't apologize, it's my fault for jumping to conclusions."

"I know why you did," I sigh. "I would have done the same thing, probably."

A cold wind blows through the mountain trail behind us, making my bones rattle. I turn my back against it, pulling my coat collar up around my neck protectively. Just as the breeze dies down, I feel something warm snaking over my shoulders and around my neck. I look up to see Rei-chan red-facedly adjusting his scarf around me, his eyes set in determination. Once he's finished, he looks away.

"Rei-chan-"

"You've been out here longer than me, haven't you? I don't mind if you use it."

I can't think of anything to say, so I merely cover my mouth and nose in the warm cloth and sputter a thank you. The two of us stand by the silent sea, looking out into it. I wonder if Rei-chan feels the same way I do when he looks at the ocean. It used to make me feel like anything was possible, but now I only feel a strange brand of hopelessness, as if the water has taken something from me. It's a curious sensation, one that fades gradually the more I experience it. Maybe _that's_ why I come down here like this. To wait for the day the ocean can make me feel happy again.

"Nagisa-kun?" Rei-chan's voice brings me back and makes me realize I don't know how long we had been standing here in silence. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Mmm?"

Rei-chan draws in a long breath through his nose. "If you don't want to talk about it, I completely understand, but… Why do you come here? Is it because of Makoto-sempai?"

Even after three months, Rei-chan's voice carries a note of hesitancy whenever he says Mako-chan's name. None of us are used to it yet. I wonder if we'll ever be able to say his name without feeling a sharp jab of despondency like a kick in the groin.

"I…" I've started talking, but I realize I don't know the reason very well myself. I almost feel like I come here to understand why I feel so driven to. "I think it's partly for Mako-chan, and partly for myself. I can't say I'm coming out here to mourn or anything like that…" I stare at the ground, stuffing my cold hands into my pockets. "Maybe I come here because I'm angry."

"Angry?" Rei-chan repeats gently.

The ocean heaves itself toward the shore, the outermost edge of foam touching our boots. The ocean is lively tonight. The rolling waves bring back hazy, broken memories of a haunting melody, Mako-chan's voice and a horrible, blinding screech that felt as though it had torn my eardrums to shreds. I wrote it off as a dream some time ago, but now I'm not so sure.

"We'll never know what happened to him. To _any_ of them. There are no bodies, no clues, nothing. No finality. How do we even know if they're dead? What if they all just left for some reason?" When I turn to look at Rei-chan, he's staring at me with so much concern I nearly laugh. "I promise I'm not in denial or anything like that. I just can't help but think about it. Haven't you thought about it, Rei-chan? About how bizarre it all is?"

Rei-chan relaxes and sighs, adjusting his glasses. "I have." he admits, staring out at the sea. For a split second I think he looks almost like some troubled detective about to divulge something vital to his case; the black duffle coat he's wearing doesn't help. "To be honest, I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about it and trying to make sense of everything. I've looked into it as far as I can, which isn't very far, but… Iwatobi isn't the first place something like this has happened. Lots of small, more secluded towns have had similar incidents."

"Wait, seriously?" I almost ask why he hadn't shared this information with me sooner, but I realize what a sensitive topic this is. It's likely Rei-chan didn't want to bring it up and risk upsetting me or putting us in a sour mood. "In other places, people are disappearing after hearing a song?"

Rei-chan looks down. "The 'song' bit isn't talked about as widely online as it is here in Iwatobi, but I found a forum chock-full of people from different areas trading stories. They were all eerily similar, right down to the timespan in which people will disappear before it stops."

A chill moves through me rivaling the freezing winter air. My eyes find the ground, and I kick at a rock. "It stopped after Mako-chan disappeared, right?" I ask, mostly as a reminder. The disappearances had come to a grinding halt after Mako-chan. He was the last one.

"Yes," Rei-chan says quietly.

I'm not sure what to do with the information I've heard. Police and detectives have been trying tirelessly to find the missing people and come up with absolutely nothing, so what could I possibly do?

As was procedure for a possible serial-abductor case such as Iwatobi's, Mako-chan's cellphone and laptop were taken into custody after he disappeared. They couldn't find anything unusual on either device aside from one string of texts from the day Mako-chan stayed out all night. I was immediately questioned by police, and I told them everything I thought to be relevant. I told them what little I knew about Mako-chan's 'girlfriend'. It wasn't really a surprise when I was told that Mako-chan had no texts, calls or emails from anyone that he could have been in a relationship with. I'm not sure when it became clear to me that Mako-chan was hiding more than just a girlfriend with strict parents, but toward the end it was glaringly obvious there was something much deeper going on.

"All these places where people are disappearing, are they close to water?" I ask suddenly.

Rei-chan glances up at the sky in thought and prods a knuckle against his chin. "I don't remember each and every place where people claimed this phenomenon was occurring, but most of them did seem to be islands, and many of them were in Japan. I was able to read quite a lot about it because most of the posts were from Japanese bloggers."

If I hadn't seen it all up close, I would say that it sounds campy. I love horror movies because of the cheap thrill they provide, and I'm more than acquainted with Japanese horror film plots; all of this seems to be plucked straight from one of them. But with Mako-chan gone, I can't consider it anything but real.

"People are disappearing from places surrounded by water. The missing people said they heard a song coming from the ocean. Mako-chan told me he met someone special down by the water, and once when I was talking to him on the phone I could hear the ocean waves." I sigh, rubbing my hand through my hair. "The police would have already made that connection, right? I mean, there's no way they could be missing something that obvious?"

"I don't think two high-school boys could possibly know more than the police about something they've been investigating." Rei-chan reasons. "Water certainly does seem to hold everything about this case together. I'm positive they've noticed the connection."

I let out a frustrated groan, partially muffled by Rei-chan's scarf. "This sucks! I just want to know what happened to Mako-chan, and everyone else who vanished… Why can't we just get answers?" I want to stop thinking. My brain is throbbing and I feel like throwing things into the ocean with all my might, cursing at it, demanding why it knows more about what happened to my friend than I do. I feel horribly guilty for ever making light of something so serious, for inadvertently falling in line with the rest of the students that whispered about the incidents as if it was the next big ghost story. All of a sudden my emotions are bubbling to the surface, threatening to boil over. "Why can't anyone figure it out? What the hell are they even doing? How can it be so hard to find five missing people? _Five fucking people_ , how can five people just vanish without a trace?"

"Nagisa-k-"

"I want Mako-chan back! I want to talk with him more, I want us to have lunch with him again and see him at school. _Why can't anyone tell me where he went_?"

I hardly notice how loudly I was yelling or how much I was crying until a bitterly cold breeze blows over my face and freezes the water to my cheeks. Before I can even consider being embarrassed over my outburst, warm arms are wrapping around my shoulders and sweeping me into a tight embrace, my face pressing hard against Rei-chan's collar. I've never been more unsure about what to do with my arms. They hang uselessly at my sides as Rei-chan hugs me against him, his nose brushing against my covered neck. I'm too surprised to react, too exhausted to think.

"Nagisa-kun… I'm so sorry… Please don't hold it in anymore…" He grips me a little more tightly, and I feel my tears reemerge. I allow myself to stop thinking and I cry. My arms find a purpose and they wrap around Rei-chan tightly, my hands gripping the back of his coat with all of my remaining strength. I press my face into Rei-chan's neck, letting my emotions pour out in a torrent of pitiful sobs.

I can feel Rei-chan's shoulders quaking, and I hear a muffled sob by my ear. For some reason, his emotional reaction makes me cry harder. We hold each other, the ocean rushing to meet us and brushing past our boots before receding once again. I don't even think to move. I feel like Rei-chan is pulling something out of me, and perhaps he feels the same way. His embrace is warm. As my tears begin to subside and I start to calm down, I hazily wonder if he is always so intoxicatingly warm, or whether it's because we're both so worked up.

I have no idea how much time has passed by the time I pull away from him. Our proximity is still close, and his hands are still anchored on my upper arms; I avoid his eyes and wipe my face on the back of my sleeve, feeling like a ridiculous mess.

"I'm sorry," Rei-chan sputters, his hands leaving my arms only to follow my example and pull off his glasses to wipe his eyes, "I wasn't thinking, I just-"

"Don't apologize, Rei-chan," I say, offering him a smile. "I really needed that, I think. It felt really nice." I pause to rub my eyes again. "Thank you." I add, sincerely.

Rei-chan sighs in relief, replacing his glasses. His cheeks are tinged a light pink, from either the embrace, the crying, the cold or all three. I'm sure my face is just as rosy, if not more so. His deep violet eyes lock onto mine with purpose.

"I want you to know, whenever you want to talk about anything, you can call me day or night and I'll come running. I want to be here for you, if you'll allow it."

If my face was rosy before, I'm relatively sure my face resembles a tomato by now. I'm fortunate to have Rei-chan in my life. I hadn't exactly been bottling my feelings up - at least not intentionally - but having Rei-chan here reminded me how alone I've been since Mako-chan vanished. I didn't even realize it was happening, but I suppose it was. It's normal to grieve, but I don't think I'm grieving. I want closure. I want to know what happened to Mako-chan in those weeks leading up to his disappearance. Perhaps there's a tiny shred of hope in me somewhere that he's still alive. Those thoughts and ideas are poisonous and consuming, and they've left me feeling hollow.

I stare out at the ocean, finally understanding why it is I come out here. I'm punishing myself. For not knowing, for not doing more for Mako-chan when I could see he was hurting; the ocean is the only connection I feel I have to him now, so I come here for answers that I'll probably never get. Somehow, I know I'll never see Mako-chan again. Even so, I can't spend the rest of my life doing this to myself. I have to move on and give myself closure. I don't know how to do that, but now that I understand, I believe I can set myself on the right path.

My cold hand seeks out Rei-chan's, and I grip it in mine tightly. Rei-chan stares at me, eyes wide in surprise and face dusted entirely crimson.

"I'll allow it," I say, feeling distinctly as though I could go for another cry. I smile up at him, and I can feel his gloved fingers slipping through the gaps between my own, clutching my hand firmly. "I want you to be there for me. I promise I won't be secretive anymore, and if I need to talk or cry, I'll call you." My hand squeezes his affectionately.

Rei-chan nods, his eyes shining. "That's all I ask," he says.

The two of us remain by the edge of the water for a few minutes more, until the cold makes us relent. As we make our way toward the mountain trail, hand in hand, I cast one last look back at the ocean. It still holds no answers for me, but maybe that's okay. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at the ocean without thinking of Mako-chan. I don't want to forget him. I don't want to forget how the ocean makes me feel.

I turn away and head up the trail with Rei-chan, cheeks stinging with cold, the far-off sounds of gentle ocean waves sticking to my back.

**Author's Note:**

> Whyyyy is Nagisa always crying in every Reigisa fic I write T_T Well I guess he has a lot more reason to cry this time around, so it can't be helped. 
> 
> Anyway, here's the first of ?? one-shots I'm planning for Erotomania. I meant to get this done in time for day 3 of Reigisa Week, but I finished it a bit late orz
> 
> Should I group all of these in a series? I wasn't sure since Erotomania is so much lengthier than these one-shots are going to be


End file.
